Online backup services like Mozy® and Carbonite® provide consumers with remote data backup. However, these services require a monthly fee and users do not have physical access to their backup media. Moreover, in the event of a failure of their backed up storage device, consumers subscribing to such services are forced to carry out a restore procedure that does not restore a mirror image of their failed drive and that can be quite lengthy. Indeed, even using a high speed connection, restoring an entire drive can take hours, especially if the backed up content includes rich media.
What are needed, therefore, are methods and systems that do not suffer from the aforementioned disadvantages.